Veterinary Workers Vote to Unionize in Orchard Park

Another group of customer service-based workers has unionized in Western New York.

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It's becoming a growing trend for service workers around the United States to band together and form or join a union. One of the biggest examples of this happened in Buffalo, New York when a group of Starbucks employees became the first union store in the chain's history. It made national news and has led to several other Starbucks locations also forming and joining unions.

Now, a Veterinary Clinic in Orchard Park has done something similar. Workers at the Orchard Park Veterinary Medical Center have voted to join the CWA Local 1168 Union, as announced on Facebook below.

CWA stands for the Communications Workers of America. As stated on the CWA main site:

CWA members work in telecommunications and information technology, the airline industry, news media, broadcast and cable television, education, health care, public service and education, law enforcement, manufacturing and other fields.

Workers Reportedly started organizing early in the year because of staffing problems, WGRZ reports.

It's an interesting trend that more and more people working in customer service-related fields are starting to unionize. It used to be most labor and manufacturing workers that formed unions. While many still remain, a lot of those jobs have been moved overseas over the last several decades to avoid unions and to lower production costs.

It will be interesting to see how companies adjust to this trend. In my opinion, they will look to continue to create more automated processes, like the self-checkout lines at grocery stores. Or even Amazon with their people-less convenience stores. Then again, how much can really be automated without a full-fledged robot doing the job?  Is that next?

Many people are rooting for the unionizing workers t better conditions, wages, and the quality of their work as well.